How to Make a 3D Model of an Ocean Floor for Kids

Common household items can make a detailed model of the ocean floor.
••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

Oceans cover over 70 percent of the Earth's surface. At the bottom, the ocean floor features tall mountains, expansive plains and deep trenches. Most of these features remained unknown to bathymetrists -- scientists who study the form of the ocean floor -- until the advent of sonar and satellites. Creating a model of the ocean floor out of common household items allows children to visualize a part of the Earth’s surface they cannot actually see or experience first-hand.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Mix 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of table salt and 1 cup of warm water in a large mixing bowl.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Add two or three drops of blue food coloring, and knead the dough to evenly distribute the food coloring.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Place an even layer of dough, approximately 1/2 inch thick, over the bottom of the shoe box. Smooth the dough with a thick piece of plastic. This even layer of dough represents the abyssal plain, a flat expanse of ocean floor.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Take two large handfuls of dough and roll them flat with your rolling pin. Roll the dough until you have a large rectangle approximately 1/4 inch thick. Fold the rectangle in half lengthwise. Keep folding it in half until it is approximately 1/2 inch wide. Place the folded strip of dough along the left-hand wall of the shoe box. If the strip is too long to fit in the box, slice off the extra with your thick plastic. Add dough until it reaches approximately halfway up the side of the box. This side represents the continental shelf, an area of land that lies just under the ocean’s surface near the coast line.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Roll out three more handfuls of dough into two large rectangles, each 1/4 thick. Use two handfuls of dough for one rectangle, and one handful of dough for the other rectangle. Fold each rectangle in half lengthwise. Continue folding the sheets until each is approximately 1/2 inch wide. Place the larger strip to the right of the first strip. Then, place the smaller strip to the far right. Run your piece of thick plastic diagonally down from the top of the continental shelf to the abyssal plain. This creates a steep slope that represents the continental slope -- a steep drop-off that connects the continental shelf with the deep ocean floor.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Take two small handfuls of dough and roll each of them into a rectangle with your rolling pin. With your hands, separately roll each of these rectangles width-wise into a log shape. Place the two rolled logs side-by-side in the center of the box, running from front to back. Run your finger along the crease between the two logs, forming a trench. With the thick plastic, smooth the left and right sides of the rolls so that they slope down to the ocean floor, like the sides of mountains. With your fingers, pinch the dough on either side of the trench. This creates the mid-ocean ridge, a feature of the ocean floor with two mountain chains separated by a valley.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Scrape out some of the dough from the abyssal plain to the right of the mid-ocean ridge with your little finger. This creates an ocean trench. The deep-sea trenches, such as the Marianas Trench, are the ocean’s deepest parts.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Form two mountains out of dough and place them to the right of the trench. To form a mountain, take a golf-ball-sized piece of dough and roll it between the palms of your hands to form a ball. Place the ball on the ocean floor, and push the outer part down against the surface, smoothing the crease with your fingers and leaving the middle part higher. Gently work the dough at the top of the ball until it forms a peak. With the thick plastic, slice off the top of one of the mountains, approximately 1/2 inch from the top. The mountain with the peak is a seamount , an isolated mountain on the ocean floor, while the mountain with the flat top is a guyot -- a seamount with a flat, eroded surface.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Let the dough dry for approximately 5 days.

    ••• Dale Davidson/Demand Media

    Cut off one of the long sides of the shoe box with a pair of scissors, allowing you to see the contours of the ocean floor.

    Things You'll Need

    • Large mixing bowl
    • 2 cups flour
    • 1 cup table salt
    • 1 cup warm water
    • Blue food coloring
    • Shoe box
    • Piece of thick plastic, such as a laminated library card
    • Rolling pin
    • Scissors

Related Articles

What Forms When Two Continental Plates Collide?
How to Make a 3D Cone Shape
What Are the Most Common Landforms?
How to Build a Longhouse for a Third Grade School Project
How to Build a Watershed for a School Project
Landforms Caused by Plate Tectonics
What Are the Landforms of the Temperate Deciduous Forest?
Landforms of the Piedmont
How to Build an Elbow Joint Model
What Are Four Major Landforms?
What Are Some Examples of a Coastal Plain?
List of Landforms and Slope Landforms
Three Types of Convergent Boundaries
Landforms Near Chicago
List of Natural Resources in New York State
Fifth Grade Ocean Floor Project
What Are the 4 Main Types of Landforms?
How to Make a Plateau With Clay
What Are the Physical Characteristics of the Atlantic...

Dont Go!

We Have More Great Sciencing Articles!